Hillary says she cares about the working folks - but she walked out of a restaurant and did not leave the waitress a tip.

She did the same thing in her first Senate run

So much for her "caring" and "compassion" for the working folks.

Of course, her staff took the blame and tiped the waitress AFTER the story broke

Chance Encounter with Clinton

I followed Clinton during a recent bus tour across Iowa, when she and her entourage pulled into a Maid-Rite, a greasy spoon famous for its loose-meat sandwich. Clinton settled into a red stool at the counter, ate a sandwich, chatted with her waitress and then was on her way.

The scene gave Clinton perfect fodder for her next few stump speeches. It turns out her waitress was a single, working mom  just the kind of voter Democrats are courting aggressively this year.

Clinton recalled the meeting for an audience up the road in Boone. "The woman waiting on us  it was her first day," she said, adding, "She was a little nervous. Single mom, raised two boys, works at a nursing home and always has a second job."

If she's elected president, Clinton promised, people like her waitress will have it better.

The way Clinton eased the waitress into her rhetoric is something repeated day after day, by all the campaigns. But in the process, people like the waitress don't always have their stories told.

'Nobody Got Left a Tip'

"I wished I would have been asked first," the waitress, Anita Esterday, said of Clinton's decision to insert her in a speech. "I wish she would have asked if she could talk about me later. I didn't like it when someone called me up and said Hillary Clinton is talking about you. It's like, what'd I do now? What's she saying?"

When I returned to the Maid-Rite a few weeks later, Esterday said the senator had caught her off guard. But once they got talking, she was honest with Clinton about her need to work two to three jobs.

"I've been doing it all my life. Why should it change now that I'm old," Esterday said.

Esterday does not think Clinton got it. "I don't think she understood at all what I was saying," Esterday said. "I mean, nobody got left a tip that day."

Clinton may have decided not to tip. She was also never given a bill  her meal was on the house. Still, Esterday said Clinton might have left her something: "Maybe they don't carry money. I don't know."

The visit hurt Esterday in another way. The local paper ran photos of her with Clinton. She said her supervisor at the nursing home isn't a big Hillary Clinton fan and she thinks that may be related to why her hours were almost totally cut.

Now, Esterday is looking for a different second job. However, she said she's not upset that Clinton visited the restaurant.

Are you intentionally duplicitous? Forgot something from your link, I believe:

Editor's Note: Since this story aired, Hillary Clinton's campaign contacted NPR to say that the campaign paid Maid-Rite a bill for $157 the day of Clinton's visit and left $100 in tip money. NPR contacted Maid-Rite manager Brad Crawford, who confirmed that a bill was paid and tip money was left. Crawford, who was not in the restaurant at the time, said that he believes a campaign staffer left the money with one of his employees, but "where Hillary was sitting, there was no tip left." Neither Anita Esterday nor the manager on duty that day were available for comment as of noon Thursday.

Hillary says she cares about the working folks - but she walked out of a restaurant and did not leave the waitress a tip.

She did the same thing in her first Senate run

So much for her "caring" and "compassion" for the working folks.

Of course, her staff took the blame and tiped the waitress AFTER the story broke

Chance Encounter with Clinton

I followed Clinton during a recent bus tour across Iowa, when she and her entourage pulled into a Maid-Rite, a greasy spoon famous for its loose-meat sandwich. Clinton settled into a red stool at the counter, ate a sandwich, chatted with her waitress and then was on her way.

The scene gave Clinton perfect fodder for her next few stump speeches. It turns out her waitress was a single, working mom  just the kind of voter Democrats are courting aggressively this year.

Clinton recalled the meeting for an audience up the road in Boone. "The woman waiting on us  it was her first day," she said, adding, "She was a little nervous. Single mom, raised two boys, works at a nursing home and always has a second job."

If she's elected president, Clinton promised, people like her waitress will have it better.

The way Clinton eased the waitress into her rhetoric is something repeated day after day, by all the campaigns. But in the process, people like the waitress don't always have their stories told.

'Nobody Got Left a Tip'

"I wished I would have been asked first," the waitress, Anita Esterday, said of Clinton's decision to insert her in a speech. "I wish she would have asked if she could talk about me later. I didn't like it when someone called me up and said Hillary Clinton is talking about you. It's like, what'd I do now? What's she saying?"

When I returned to the Maid-Rite a few weeks later, Esterday said the senator had caught her off guard. But once they got talking, she was honest with Clinton about her need to work two to three jobs.

"I've been doing it all my life. Why should it change now that I'm old," Esterday said.

Esterday does not think Clinton got it. "I don't think she understood at all what I was saying," Esterday said. "I mean, nobody got left a tip that day."

Clinton may have decided not to tip. She was also never given a bill  her meal was on the house. Still, Esterday said Clinton might have left her something: "Maybe they don't carry money. I don't know."

The visit hurt Esterday in another way. The local paper ran photos of her with Clinton. She said her supervisor at the nursing home isn't a big Hillary Clinton fan and she thinks that may be related to why her hours were almost totally cut.

Now, Esterday is looking for a different second job. However, she said she's not upset that Clinton visited the restaurant.

This is the sort of stupid idiocy that makes people hate politics....Hillary won't give the American public straight answers about how she would handle numerous issues that are vital to this nation if she was President...and all the media can do is hem and haw about it rather than demanding she answer...but the suspicion that she didn't leave a tip gets on Drudge in about 0.1 seconds even though it was obviously a bullshit story.

Sometimes it just makes me want to go back to the days before I paid attention to politics so I wouldn't have to know how bloody ridiculous the whole mess is.

Now the Clinton war room is full damage control. I love the excuse they are giving

ABC News' Eloise Harper Reports: Rule number one when campaigning at a diner: always leave a good tip -- and, apparently, make sure it gets properly 'disbursed'.

In early October, Sen. Hillary Clinton's 'Middle Class Express' made a pit stop at the Maid Rite diner in Marshalltown, Iowa.

The New York senator, joined by local political luminaries Christie Vilsack and Ruth Harkin, enjoyed a famous loose meat sandwich and attempted to hand caucus cards to the Iowans inside.

Clinton also spoke to one of the diner's waitresses, Anita Esterday. It was her first day on the job and she and Clinton shared a short exchange. Esterday, who has three jobs and works 12 hour shifts, said to Clinton "both of my sons have worked since they were 14 years old"; Clinton told her, "I'm proud of you."

But, according to Esterday, that's where Clinton's gratitude ended as the campaign crew left with nary a gratuity for any of the hard working Maid-Riters.

"I mean, nobody got left a tip that day," Esterday said in an interview with NPR after a visit by Senator Clinton.

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign contacted ABC News to assert that they did, contrary to Esterday's claim to NPR, pay $157 for food at Maid-Rite and left a $100 tip to be split among the staff.

Sensing the story was reaching the tipping point, ABC News' Eloise Harper contacted Brad Crawford, manager of Maid-Rite caught in the political mixer, who said the senator's staff did pay a tip but "it might have not been disbursed properly."

The NPR report claimed the meal was on the house. And even the Emily Post Institute doesn't have anything to say on the etiquette of presidential campaign tipping. (Post does, however, have something so say about the National Anthem -- a sore subject in the Obama camp these days).

"I don't think she understood at all what I was saying," Esterday continued to tell NPR. "Afterwards it was like do you guys live in the real world, maybe they don't carry money, I don't know."

Esterday's assertion may be a bipartisan one: earlier this year, former Governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass., who holds a fortune estimated between $190-$250 million found himself sans wallet and without the means to pay for his vanilla steamer at a campaign stop in DeWitt, Iowa.

But an allegedly tip-less visit wasn't Esterday's only complaint.

"As for all of this attention on me, it hasn't helped my life, its made my life worse," added the Maid-Rite waitress.

Esterday's picture with the Senator also landed in a local newspaper. Her employer at the nursing home is not a Clinton fan and, since the photo appeared, the waitress claims her shifts have been reduced; she suspects the picture in the paper was the reason.

Despite everything, Esterday did take Clinton's pitch to heart: she's still deciding whether to support Clinton or Obama.

Are you intentionally duplicitous? Forgot something from your link, I believe:

Click to expand...

November 08, 2007
It takes a village to tip a single mom (updated)
Clarice Feldman
David Greene of NPR reports that Hillary and her entourage swept into an Iowa diner, had a meal on the house, spoke to her waitress who reported she had to work two jobs to support her family then left without leaving her a tip and (without permission to do so) used that woman's story in a campaign speech.

"I wished I would have been asked first," the waitress, Anita Esterday, said of Clinton's decision to insert her in a speech. "I wish she would have asked if she could talk about me later. I didn't like it when someone called me up and said Hillary Clinton is talking about you. It's like, what'd I do now? What's she saying?"

When I returned to the Maid-Rite a few weeks later, Esterday said the senator had caught her off guard. But once they got talking, she was honest with Clinton about her need to work two to three jobs.

"I've been doing it all my life. Why should it change now that I'm old," Esterday said.

Esterday does not think Clinton got it. "I don't think she understood at all what I was saying," Esterday said. "I mean, nobody got left a tip that day."
It's not the first time the champion of working women has stiffed a waitress after scarfing down a freebie meal.
NPR has appended an editor's note to the original story:

Editor's Note: Since this story aired, Hillary Clinton's campaign contacted NPR to say that the campaign paid Maid-Rite a bill for $157 the day of Clinton's visit and left $100 in tip money. NPR contacted Maid-Rite manager Brad Crawford, who confirmed that a bill was paid and tip money was left. Crawford, who was not in the restaurant at the time, said that he believes a campaign staffer left the money with one of his employees, but "where Hillary was sitting, there was no tip left." Neither Anita Esterday nor the manager on duty that day were available for comment as of noon Thursday.

Here's a photo of the diner. You can see how small it is and how unlikely the Clinton campaign story is. Color me skeptical respecting the report from the manager who admittedly was not there that day. I do not think it possible that the diner received a $100 cash tip that day and none of the waitresses knew of it, or if they did they didn't inform the waitress who served Hillary.http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...1/post_71.html

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